It's a common scenario in crypto projects: a prospect requests zero-knowledge proof infrastructure, but when you dig deeper into their actual requirements, ECDSA signatures are what they really need. Happens more often than you'd think. Sometimes teams chase the latest buzzword when simpler, more battle-tested cryptographic solutions already solve their problem. The key is understanding the gap between what sounds cool and what actually gets the job done. ZK proofs come with complexity trade-offs—longer verification times, steeper learning curves. ECDSA? Proven, lightweight, widely supported across blockchains. Worth asking: does your use case genuinely need the privacy and verification advantages of ZK, or are you just following the hype? Sometimes the answer is the latter, and that's when you pivot to what actually fits.